


hawke would be there

by trvelyans



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Skyhold (Dragon Age), Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:29:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23863801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trvelyans/pseuds/trvelyans
Summary: “I don’t want to lose you, Varric,” she whispered.“You won’t, Hawke,” he whispered back. “Shit, you won’t lose me.”
Relationships: Female Hawke/Varric Tethras, Hawke/Varric Tethras
Comments: 10
Kudos: 53





	hawke would be there

Well, there were worse places to get punched in the face.

For once Varric hadn’t been expecting it, although he probably should’ve. After all, the guy had downed about two tankards of some drink imported from Par Vollen in about five minutes, and for a man that drunk, the table separating him and Varric probably seemed like nothing more than a flimsy piece of wood with a couple handfuls of poorly played cards spread out on top of it. And though Varric didn’t expect the first punch, he _did_ expect the second, as well as the third that didn’t actually come.

When he pushed himself up from where he had been thrown to the ground, Hawke already had a hand wrapped around the man’s throat and was dragging him across the floorboards to push him up against a pole. (The man was a couple inches taller than her and a couple of inches wider, but that didn’t seem to slow her down in the slightest.) “Do you want to try that again?” she growled, grey eyes like freshly-sharpened daggers.

His voice was hoarse. “That _bastard_ had it coming –“

She pulled the man an inch away from the pole only to slam him into it again, her thin lips pulled into a snarl. “I asked you a question,” she said.

The man blinked at her, frowning hard. “No, I don’t, but –“

She let go of his throat. The man, groaning, sagged against the pole, reaching up weakly to touch his fingers to his neck. While still keeping an eye on him, Hawke took a step back and, after quickly glancing over her shoulder to where Varric was nursing his swollen cheek, she clocked the man across the face, sending him sprawling across the floor.

She wasn’t normally like this. She wouldn’t have been if she didn’t down her own two tankards of the same shit.

“Get out of here,” she muttered dismissively, taking another two steps back to where she stayed this time. The man scrambled to his feet and ran out the front door of the Hanged Man on unsteady legs while every other patron inside the bar watched his hasty retreat in silence.

Hawke watched, too, leaning over to grab the man’s third tankard and downing it in one gulp. “So,” she said, slamming it down onto the table. “Cards, anyone?”

* * *

Hawke was drunk again.

After the Deep Roads, there was rarely a time she _wasn’t_ drunk – after all, with Bethany locked up in the Circle Tower where the Templars were breathing down her neck and the estate in Hightown feeling emptier and hollower than Hawke thought it would, there wasn’t much reason _not_ to drink.

At least that’s what she told him. And with the list of shit that had pissed him off in recent memory getting longer and longer, he couldn’t help but agree.

Leandra was already asleep, so Varric tried to drag Hawke through the mansion as soundlessly as he could manage when she _wouldn’t stop talking_. He foolishly hoped, at first, that if he agreed with everything she was saying – “mmhmm, mmhmm, sure, Hawke, you have a good point there” – then she might run out of things to go on about and give up or _something_ , but he should’ve remembered that Hawke had never been the type of woman to give up on things, and she’d rather run out of breath than stop ranting when she had, apparently, a thousand things to rant about.

Not that he didn’t _like_ listening to her talk – he did, probably much more than he liked to admit - but he didn’t want to get an earful from Leandra, too, when her daughter inevitably woke her up.

They reached her bedroom eventually, however, and there was a fleeting moment of peace when Hawke fell face-first onto her bed that Varric relished before, three seconds later, she rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.

“I’m gonna feel like shit tomorrow, huh?” she said quietly, a slight crease between her eyebrows.

She would _definitely_ feel like shit tomorrow. “Tell you what,” Varric said, crossing the room to her bed and climbing on top of her mattress, “I won’t let Fenris or Isabela come wake you up until about… ah… let’s say _noon_.”

Hawke snorted. “Noon?” she repeated, glancing over at him.

“Yeah,” Varric replied, flopping down onto the bed beside her and propping his head up with his arm. “You can be ready by noon, right?”

She started shaking her head back and forth. “Nooooo,” she murmured, rolling onto her stomach and burying her face into the blanket again. “Can’t I just… I dunno, sleep until next Tuesday?”

“Heh.” Varric smiled good-naturedly at her, trying to ignore the way her dark purple robes were hitched high up over the backs of her thighs. “I don’t think so, Hawke. Kirkwall will probably blow up if you take a day off.”

She was silent for a long, long moment, then, and Varric thought she had fallen asleep when she said, very quietly, “I’m so tired, Varric.”

“I bet,” he said. “You should get some sleep.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

For someone who talked a lot, Hawke almost never talked about the way she felt. Even after a year and a half of friendship, what went on inside her head was still a mystery to him. Even if he _did_ want to ask – and he certainly didn’t, because he’d seen her yell at Bethany about it before and even _he_ was scared – it would probably be a moot point, anyway. Now, sitting in the cold, quiet darkness of her bedroom, Varric could feel his face fall just a little, and he frowned as he leaned forward. “Are you sure you want me to leave you alone tonight, Hawke?”

She peeled her face away from the blanket and beamed at him as if she hadn’t said anything at all. “I’m sure,” she replied. “Besides, you’ll just… uh… keep me awake and stuff anyway, and if I need to be up by noon –“

“ _Ready_ by noon –“

“If I need to be _up_ by noon,” Hawke continued, ignoring him, “then I should get to bed. Like, three hours ago.”

Varric laughed and sat up, inching across the mattress until he could hop down onto the floor. “Well, how about this: I’ll stop by half an hour before Isabela and Fenris do, accompanied by a big breakfast.”

“Why, so I can throw it up?”

“Good point.” He grabbed his jacket and pulled it over his shoulders again. “Maybe next Tuesday we take the day off and shoot the shit in the Hightown market. I’ll buy you somethin’ nice.”

Hawke looked at him over her shoulder. “Aw,” she cooed, batting her eyelashes at him, “ _me_?”

“Yes, you.” He ran a hand through his hair and tried to force himself to look anywhere _besides_ her grinning face, attempting to put himself back together after their night out. “Anyway, uh… Goodnight, Hawke. Shoot a flaming arrow through my window if you need me.”

“Willlll do.”

He shut the door tight behind him, and by the time he walked through the empty house and reached the front door, he swore he could’ve already heard her snoring.

* * *

“Sit still,” Hawke muttered, glaring at Varric.

“Well, it hurts like a bitch, Hawke.”

It didn’t help that he couldn’t really get comfortable, either, with one of Hawke’s legs bent across his lap and the other propped up against his spine to keep his back straight. Unfortunately for him, Hawke didn’t care that much – she was focused intently on the cut on his arm, which she was stitching up as best as she could with only the dim firelight to guide her hands.

They had set up camp for the night on the coast, and though they were only a couple hours’ walk away from the city when they stopped, Aveline thought it would be best to stay here until morning so they didn’t risk running into bandits along the way. Hawke agreed, which was surprising because she _hated_ sleeping in the wilderness, and if it weren’t for Varric getting sufficiently beat-up in their last run-in with some wolves, he probably would’ve been fast asleep in his bed in the Hanged Man by now.

Couldn’t deny the view of the ocean, though. Or the woman sitting beside him. (He forced himself not to think about that, though – in fact, he felt much better thinking about how much it hurt whenever she pricked his skin with the tip of her needle.)

“Have you ever done this before?” he asked with a chuckle, watching her while she worked.

“Couple times,” she answered distractedly.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, Hawke, but actually think you’re making it worse.”

She grinned at him, her tongue poking out from in between her teeth and her eyes glinting mischievously. “Well, things are always worse before they get better, right?”

After finishing up the stitches (and Hawke gently smacking Varric on the bicep before remembering the stitches she had _just_ finished), she wrapped his arm up gently with a roll of bandages she had had stuffed at the bottom of her pack that were already suspiciously stained with what seemed to be blood, and once they had both settled down again by the fire – with Hawke no longer wrapped around him and Varric once again wearing a shirt – he handed her a flask filled with ale and leaned back against a log while she took a long, long sip.

“I’m sure it’ll heal up nice,” he commented as he took the flask back from her.

“It better,” Hawke replied, closing her eyes and lying down beside him with her arms folded behind her head.

He nudged her leg with his boot. “So what were the other couple times?”

She hummed in question.

“The other couple times you stitched someone up,” Varric answered. “What were they?”

Silence fell over the make-shift campsite for a moment – an awkward, _uneasy_ moment – before Hawke’s lips curved into a forced smile. “Can’t quite remember, really,” she replied. “I’m not sure I’d like to, in any case, considering how ugly some of _my_ scars are.”

“Yeah, right.”

“They are!” She bolted upright, laughing. “I have this one across my stomach from this Darkspawn that attacked us on our way to Kirkwall – Maker, Varric, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure it’s still infected, actually.”

“Well, maybe you can show me another time.”

“Yeah,” she responded, lying back down once again. “Maybe.”

“One time, when we were kids, Bartrand cut open my lip.” Varric glanced up into the sky where silver stars seemed to blink curiously back at him. “Everyone thought it was a play-fight or something, but it wasn’t. I’d stolen one of his favourite quills to write something down, and he was furious – I’d never seen him like that before.” He took a sip from his flask and swallowed it loudly. “I’ve seen him like that too often since then. Especially after – well…”

He cleared his throat and closed his eyes. He didn’t like to think about Bartrand anymore because, instead of the few good memories they had together, all Varric could actually remember was what Bartrand had done to fuck Hawke and Varric over. He was dead and gone – which was as much as he deserved – and there was no point in dwelling on him any longer. Even if Varric felt like he was haunted by him. Even if he sometimes thought he saw his brother’s face in crowded rooms or in shadowy alcoves in Hightown.

“Beth skinned her knee, once, when we were running through the town.” She held her hand up towards him, and Varric placed the closed flask in her palm. “I was ahead of her, far ahead of her, and I didn’t even notice she wasn’t still running behind me until she started crying. I carried her home to mum and then – well, she went to bed. Dad stayed by her the whole night until she stopped crying, and Carver and I sat outside in the grass, pretending we couldn’t hear her crying inside.” Hawke took a long drink. “Mum was _so_ mad. I was miserable for about two whole days, especially because Beth kept coming into my room and stroking my hair and telling me it wasn’t my fault.”

“Well, it _wasn’t_ your fault.”

Hawke shrugged. “I’m her older sister, Varric.” She handed the flask back to him. “It’s my job to protect her.”

“You think it’s your job to protect _everyone_.”

“Not everyone.” She frowned. “Just the people who are important to me.”

Varric ran his calloused thumb around the opening of the flask, eyebrows gathering together in the middle of his forehead.

“Thanks for always taking care of _me_ , Hawke.”

She cracked open an eye and smiled at him. “You’d do the same for me,” she answered. “Except for the shitty stitches, I guess. If you ever try to come at me with a needle, I’ll sic the dog on you.”

* * *

Kirkwall had never seen a time this dark.

Heavy gray storm clouds hung from the sky, and rain poured down onto the city, unrelenting. It had stormed so much that the puddles in the Hightown Market were as high was the water in the harbour, and rumour had it that the docks had been drowning in the downpour. With the Qunari’s threats growing stronger and stronger, the city was in desperate need of someone to save them – but the only person who _could_ save them was out of commission, and had been for a week straight.

The merchant and his son who lived in the Hawke estate would not let Varric in. (He thought about sneaking in through a window, but if he felt short already, that certainly wouldn’t help.) He stood outside the front door every night for a week, rapping his fist against the wood until his knuckles were numb and the man _finally_ answered, and every time Varric thought about strong-arming him and pushing him to the side but couldn’t go through with it when his kid was watching with those eyes of his.

The eighth day, however, he was about to give up and head back to the Hanged Man to drown himself in a tankard of something that tasted like ass when the door finally opened wide enough for Varric to be able to slip inside.

“You’re the only person Messere Hawke said she would want to see,” Bodahn said. “Thought it was about time I let you in.”

“Thanks,” Varric said, looking down at the bottle of wine in his hands. “Here, uh – take this. It’s Orlesian – expensive, too, but I’m not sure Hawke’ll want it. And if she did want it, I probably wouldn’t give it to her, anyway.”

The man smiled, bowed his head, and hurriedly backed out of the room, pulling his son along with him.

Varric’s walk through the house felt longer than normal. (And not just because he kept tripping over furniture, either.) He knew, on the other side of the house, that the person he cared about the most in the world was hurting, and he didn’t know what he was going to say.

Right outside her door, Varric took a deep breath in, and knocked once.

There was no response from inside the room. He couldn’t even hear the creak of her bed or the rustle of her sheets. He knocked again, frowning, and again, there was nothing – not a whisper, not a sound. The silence was louder than he could handle. With a sigh, Varric braced his hand against the doorknob and pushed the door open.

It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the room. The hearth, which normally roared with fire, crackled with a few stray embers that had yet to burn themselves out, and wind howled through the slightly open windows, where, on one windowsill, a long, flickering candle had melted down into nothing. Curled into a ball in the middle of the bed was a suspiciously Hawke-shaped shadow, and Varric shrugged his coat off as he crept closer, tossing it to the side as quietly as he could so he didn’t startle her.

“Hawke?” he asked gently. He sounded like a stranger even to himself.

The shadow in the middle of the bed glanced up, and he heard a soft sniffle.

“Varric?” Hawke asked.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Varric said, his voice hushed and low. “I’m here.”

She pushed herself up from the bed and watched him approach. Varric knew Hawke’s face better than anyone – he knew every smile and every roll of her eyes – but he couldn’t quite imagine the expression on her face right now. His knees hit the mattress and he climbed onto it, feeling around the mess of blankets and sheets for her.

“You came,” she whispered, reaching out for him, too, until his fingers brushed her damp cheeks.

“Of course I did,” he whispered back, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pulling her against his chest as she started to cry.

She didn’t say anything else, and neither did he. For a man of many words, Varric couldn’t seem to find the right ones for right now, no matter how hard he tried. Instead he held her in his arms while she struggled to hold herself up, and hushed her when she started apologizing – “there’s nothing to apologize for, Hawke” he wanted to say but didn’t – and hugged her close when she buried her face into his neck and cried into his skin. Instead of talking, for once, he’d sit in silence with her, because, for once, that’s what she wanted.

And Varric would do anything for her.

They sat together on her bed like that until the sky began to lighten – as much as it could with the storm still raging on outside, anyway – and when, in the pale purple dawn, Varric noticed the bags under her eyes, he pulled her down onto the bed beside him, drew the blanket over their bodies so they could bury themselves deep beneath it, and held her just as tightly until she fell asleep.

And he kept holding her long after that, too.

* * *

One day, when Hawke could finally walk again after her duel with the Arishok and the sun was shining for the first time in a long time, she and Varric took a trip down to the docks to dump some ale into the water in honour of the retreating Qunari ship.

“Here’s to the big guy,” Varric announced, pulling the bottle from his bag and tipping it over until the alcohol began to pour smoothly into the water. “Taken down single-handedly by the newest Champion of Kirkwall.”

Hawke pressed her hand against her face, desperately trying to smother her growing smile. “I _hate_ that,” she murmured as Varric looked over his shoulder at her and grinned. “Bethany won’t stop teasing me about it.”

“Remind me when I’m finished to come over and, you know, kiss the ground you walk on or whatever a hero like you deserves,” Varric replied, earning a glare from Hawke – well, a glare from the eye that he could see, since the other one was hidden underneath a bright violet bruise courtesy of the Arishok. “Maybe ask your hand in marriage so I inherit all your riches when another asshole trying to compensate for something tries to take you on in a fight.”

“ _You’re_ the asshole,” Hawke muttered. “Besides, you’re the one with all the riches. You just want an excuse to marry me.”

Varric chuckled but didn’t say anything else – he didn’t want to incriminate himself further.

Once he had poured out all of the alcohol from the bottle and tossed it into the harbour for good measure, he wiped his hands off on his pants and walked over to Hawke, taking a seat next to her. “Gimme some of that,” he said, reaching out for her bottle. She yanked it out of his grasp.

“No, get your own!” she laughed.

“I got my own and dumped in the harbour,” Varric replied. “Come on, please? For me?”

With a dramatic eye roll, Hawke pushed the bottle into Varric’s hand. He grinned at her and took a sip from it, staring out at the water.

“I don’t want to get married, anyway,” Hawke said quietly, plucking at the hem of her pants.

He glanced at her. “No?”

She shook her head, reaching up to smooth a hand over her freshly shaven scalp. “I don’t think so,” she answered. “I’m not good with feelings. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know that.” Varric took another sip from the bottle. “Sometimes you just have to take a chance on them anyway, you know? Like that very odd woman said all those years ago –“

“Do _not_ say it,” Hawke replied, elbowing him in the side and snatching the drink from him while he was distracted. "Don't bring her up again, please. I _just_ forgot about the dragon thing, and that's enough reason for a girl to wish she was a mage."

“Okay,” he chuckled, “I won’t.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Hawke continued, wrinkling her nose. “And _anyway_ , the thought of getting married is _much_ scarier than facing the Arishok.”

“You may have a point here.” He slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “What about if you married the Arishok?”

She elbowed him again and he laughed. He laughed enough that he didn’t notice her leaning her head on his shoulder until his chin bumped up against her skull, and he adjusted so that he could lean his head against hers, too, pulling her an inch closer and ignoring how easily his fingertips glided over the velvet sleeves of her dark purple shirt.

 _Sweet Andraste_ , he prayed that she couldn’t hear his heart beating.

* * *

Varric had pulled Hawke into bed with him. Fully-clothed, of course. Thankfully.

He blamed it on the alcohol, but in his defense, it was true enough – he wouldn’t even have touched her if he was sober, not with the headaches he always gave himself when he thought about her for more than a couple minutes. Now, however, with him drunk and Hawke still a little bit drunk, too, he let her rest her head on his stomach and ran his fingers idly through her dark, prickly hair while they stared up at the ceiling.

“I had a brilliant idea the other day, Varric.”

“What’s that?”

Hawke flipped over onto her side. “You should write about us,” she said. “For your next book.”

He chuckled. “Maybe,” he said, sounding as unconvincingly blasé about it as he could. “We’ll see.”

She didn’t know that he had already written enough about her to fill a hundred books, and he wanted to keep it all for himself.

* * *

“What were you _thinking_?”

“I was trying to save your _ass_ , Hawke. What, is that a crime now?”

“You shouldn’t have done it.”

“That’s a real funny way of saying ‘thank you’.”

“I have nothing to thank you for!”

“Yes, you do! Did you miss the fact that that asshole was about to slice your head in two?”

“You shouldn’t have thrown yourself in his way!”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that, Hawke?”

“It’s not your job!”

“It _is_ my job! You think you’re the only person who gets to save people?”

“You put yourself on the line –“

“And I’d do it again! I’d do it a hundred times over! Don’t you get it, Hawke?”

“Get what? That you’re a stupid, reckless fool? That you’re a Maker-damned idiot; that you’ve always been an idiot?”

“Oh, I’m the idiot?”

“Yeah, you are!”

“Says the woman who doesn’t know that I’ve been in love with her for _years_!”

“Of course I know, Varric! And I’m a fucking Maker-damned idiot for falling in love with you, too!”

* * *

Hawke was a brutal woman, but she kissed like a broken one.

* * *

The cards they had been playing with had long since been discarded, and Varric was slumped half-asleep on Hawke’s shoulder while she stayed up to watch the sun rise. He didn’t remembered how she convinced him to climb up onto the roof of the estate – he guessed it was at some point in the afterglow – but he was here, now, and he didn’t want it to end. (And not just because he was too scared about what would happen when they climbed back down, either, though that was a part of it, too.)

“… I think it’s just easier,” Hawke was saying under her breath, fiddling with the threadbare hem of her shawl that Varric suspected looked the way it did because she fiddled with it so often. “To… make jokes and brush things off; to pretend that everything is okay so I don’t get in my head and fuck up. I used to do that, a lot, like that time Beth skinned her knee. I held her hand whenever we went out for three months after that. I was terrified it would happen again, and I wouldn’t have known what to do with myself if it did.”

“I know what you mean,” Varric said, adjusting his grip around her waist so he could sit up higher and rest his chin on her shoulder. “I do that, too. And it works sometimes, but… well, shit, Hawke, we could’ve been doing this for _years_.”

She laughed. “That’s true,” she replied. “I guess that dragon-woman was right, after all.”

“About what?”

“Taking a leap, not being afraid to fall,” Hawke said, then laughed and added under her breath, “or whatever the fuck it was she told us all those years ago.”

Varric groaned. “Don’t go talking like that, Hawke. You’ll make me feel old.”

“You _are_ old.”

He pressed his lips against her shoulder. “You sure don’t seem to mind,” he murmured.

“I don’t,” she responded.

“Do you care that I’m shorter than you?”

“What? Why would I care about that?”

Varric chuckled. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I just thought I’d ask.”

Hawke turned around to face him – well, as much as she could turn around when they were pressed up against each other.

“I love you, you foolish man,” she murmured. “Everything about you.”

“Even the chest hair?”

She smiled and tilted her forehead against his, pressing her nose into his cheek and dropping her voice to a hoarse whisper as she responded, " _Especially_ the chest hair.”

They left the cards on the rooftop when they climbed down later that morning. A couple weeks later, Hawke told him that, when she went back up to retrieve them the next day, they were already gone. Varric couldn’t say he cared – he had forgotten they were there in the first place.

* * *

Varric had seen the Kirkwall harbour a million different times.

He’d seen it through thunderstorms and blinding sunsets; the coldest winters and the warmest summers. He’d seen it when he was happy, when he was miserable, when he was pissed of at Bartrand for one thing or another, and when he was… fine, for once, when he had nothing to worry about beside the itch at the end of his nose. He’d seen birds careen recklessly towards the water only to pull up before they dove under; he’d seen boats of all shapes and sizes float in and out on the dark, roiling waves, occasionally losing a box of cargo to the unforgiving depths; once he saw someone fall from the cliffs of Hightown into the water, and they never resurfaced. He thought about that, sometimes, only lonely nights in his room in the Hanged Man when he couldn’t fall asleep.

Even so, he had never seen the harbour like this.

A deathly quiet had fallen over the city, one that even the thrashing of waves could not break, and the world around them had been pitched into darkness. At the head of the boat, Aveline steered the ship towards the Gallows, which would have been lost amongst the heavy fog and thick, acrid smoke from the fires throughout Kirkwall if not for the lights on the docks to guide them. Fenris stood on one side, arms crossed as he stared out at the water - Isabela stood on the other, twirling her daggers between her fingers, keeping her gaze locked on the floor. At the back of the boat, Varric sat beside Hawke, an arm around her shoulders and a hand wrapped tight around her thigh.

Neither of them said anything, too afraid to break that silence, but Hawke clung to Varric like she would fall out of the boat if she didn’t, and he’d rather die than lose her now.

He very well might have.

When they finally arrived at the Gallows, the Knight-Commander _graciously_ gave them a head-start to prepare for the battle, but it still didn’t seem like enough. Enough time, enough warning – they had a handful of mages to fight alongside them, but for now it seemed like they were on their own. Fenris and Isabela sharpened their weapons while Orsino spoke in hushed whispers to his mages, and Hawke wept into Varric’s shoulder.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she whispered.

“You won’t, Hawke,” he whispered back, clutching her so tightly he was certain his fingernails would cut through her back until her heart poured out. “Shit, you won’t lose me.”

“You _promise_.” She pulled away from him, flattening her hands against his stubbly cheeks and forcing him to look into her wide, watery eyes. “Promise me you won’t die.”

“I won’t,” Varric said. “Can you promise the same to me, Hawke?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Yes, I will.”

He crushed her against his chest again, and held her there until they could hear the footfalls of the Templars fast approaching.

* * *

Varric hadn’t seen Hawke since the day after the rebellion in Kirkwall.

She was the same as he remembered.

Her light gray eyes were bright and focused; her hair was as short as it was the last time he had seen it, if not shorter, and she was still a foot and a half taller than him (if not more). When she laughed, she laughed loudly, and when she smiled, she smiled softly, in the little secret way she had always reserved just for him. Her aim was as sharp as his was – probably better, actually – and when they weren’t too busy playing cards half-naked in his room in Skyhold or drinking in the Herald’s Rest, they shot at targets in the training yard, ignoring the fawning and the flustered soldiers who watched her shoot with her sleeves rolled up to her shoulders and her shirt clinging tightly to her skin with sweat.

“They’re watching, Hawke,” Varric said one morning, subtly motioning towards the group of men standing outside the tavern. “Might want to give them a show.”

She grinned at him, tongue between her teeth. “Oh,” she replied, “I will.”

Her first arrow hit the target dead centre. The second one sliced clean through the first.

Varric supposed Bartrand had always been right when he said things got better with age.

* * *

Hawke liked spending time with Bull and the Chargers – she liked Krem the most, though Varric wasn’t surprised. They occasionally spent some time with Sera, too, when she asked to join their shooting contests, and Dorian when he could be bothered enough to leave the library (though that relationship had a much rockier start, all things considered). She ignored Cullen happily, and was on decent terms with Leliana and Josephine – she talked to Cassandra when they passed by her, though the Seeker was much more fascinated by Hawke than Hawke was of her.

She had settled down well in Skyhold after only a month. No surprise there – she was good at making room for herself, even in places other people might not _want_ her to. One night a few weeks later, after fighting Erimond and his minions at the old Warden ritual tower in the desert, Varric asked her to return with him to the Inquisition fortress after they finished their business with the Wardens. After all, with the Mage-Templar war over, there was no reason for her to hide anymore – not with the Inquisitor taking the job that she would have had if she hadn’t gone into hiding in the first place.

“We’ll see,” she teased, idly curling a strand of his hair around her finger. “Maybe I’ll find a handsome Warden-Commander at Adamant who will sweep me off my feet.”

Varric chuckled, and Hawke leaned her cheek against his hairy chest.

“I’m just kidding,” she said.

“I know,” Varric replied, smiling down at her.

The evening before their assault on Adamant, Hawke gathered the troops in the camp and told them stories of her time in Kirkwall, only stopping when she had to ask the servants to hand out another round of drinks. The soldiers, who Varric had only ever seen sad and sullen leading up to a battle, laughed and hollered and sang and _drank_ – they drank so much that Josephine had to insist they all stop drinking if they all wanted to make it through the next day. When Hawke and Varric retired to their tent for the night, long after everyone else had fallen asleep, she started crying, holding onto him like she never wanted to let go as he eased her out of her clothes and convinced her to lie down for the night.

“After this,” she said into the crook of his neck as she fell asleep, “we retire and move somewhere nice.”

“Whatever you want, Hawke,” Varric said. “Andraste knows we’ve been through enough shit for ten lifetimes.”

* * *

It had been months since Hawke left the Inquisition to escort the Wardens back to Weisshaupt, and somehow, Varric missed her more than ever.

The more dangerous things got, the more scared he was that they would never see each other again. Sure, the war between the mages and Templars had ended, and the mystery of where the Wardens had gone all those years ago was finally solved, but… How did shit seem worse than it had before? Back in Kirkwall, he’d faced crazy guardsmen, powerful Qunari, delusional Templars – during their expeiditon to the Deep Roads, he’d fought legions of Darkspawn and whatever the fuck that rock wraith thing had been. But with the Inquisition? He’d fought off bandits, Wardens, dwarves, undead monsters, demons, dragons, and… well, everyone they’d seen roaming the war-torn landscape of the Exalted Plains.

It was their last stop before returning to Skyhold – and he was just so tired. Even if he made it out of this thing alive – even if they both made it out of this thing alive – he had a feeling that something else would happen that would throw Thedas into chaos.

He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

As they picked through a field of tall grass and bright coloured flowers, Varric stared down at the ground, determined not to step into another pile of animal shit. At one point, though, he heard someone clearing their throat behind him, and he turned around to see Dorian watching him with a curious look on his face.

Uh oh. That was never a good sign.

“I'd assumed you'd go up to Weisshaupt with Hawke, Varric,” he commented, tip-toeing through the field as he bunched up the fabric of his robes in his fist and pulled them up to his thighs.

“Still business to deal with here, don't you think?” Varric replied.

He wished there wasn’t. He wished he could leave, buy a house in Antiva and settle down with Hawke – maybe a dog, too, and a couple of kids a few years down the line. But he couldn’t, and he and Hawke both knew that. It’s why she didn’t ask him to go to Weisshaupt with her. It’s why he didn’t beg the Inquisitor to let him.

“You should be thankful,” Dorian remarked. “I've been to Weisshaupt. It's not good. Carved into a mountain, cold, dour, everyone so bloody serious they can't take a piss... you wouldn't like it.”

Varric frowned. “Hawke would be there,” he said, mainly to himself.

Out of the corner of his eye, Varric could see Dorian staring at him. “And she is quite the ray of sunshine, that's true.”

“Yeah,” Varric responded. “She is.”

Dorian looked at him for a second longer before clearing his throat and marching after the Inquisitor. Varric, however, hung back, deep in his thoughts – so deep that he thought he might not ever be able to climb out.

And then he forced himself to raise his head and closed his eyes, letting the afternoon light warm his face.

The faster he got this over with, the faster he could get that house and those dogs.

The faster he and Hawke could be together again.

Varric cleared his throat, adjusted his jacket, and, once he was ready, started walking. 

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello hello ! thank you very much for reading !
> 
> hawke and varric is one of my favourite pairings, like... ever. i've written a bunch of hawke x varric stuff before (you can find it on my tumblr blog under that tag uwu) but this is the first thing i've written with phoebe, my newest hawke ! she's a purple hawke mainly, but a red and blue hawke depending on the day lol. i find hawke and varric's relationship to be literally one of the strongest i've experienced when playing video games - you can tell they love each other so much and would do anything for each other and it warms my heart so much ! (except when they're rivals but wedon'ttalkabouttherivalmances)
> 
> this fic was inspired by the party banter with dorian in the second to last scene (scene? part? snippet? idk!!!) that i saw a video of and Immediately became overwhelming emo about it. i just love varric and hawke so much okay !
> 
> this isn't their entire relationship, just a bunch of ideas i had that i thought would be nice to write about because they sort of highlight the journey they go on in regards to their feelings for each other as well as the mutual trust and respect they have for one another so the other one feels comfortable enough to let their guard down (since they both rlly use humour as a defense mechanism i think !). they're soulmates absolutely, but it took a bit of work for them to both realize that !
> 
> either way thank you for reading ! comments and kudos are appreciated, and if you'd like to see more of my writing or more about my ocs you can check out my tumblr @ trvelyans


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